The Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) industry has well-established methods that allow mutual authentication between a supplicant and an Authentication Server (AS). Some of the authentication methods used for authentication are also suitable for a supplicant where the supplicant may mutually authenticate without access to the AS server and may authenticate via the use of an Authentication Authorization and Accounting (AAA) server. However, such a method requires an extra entity, namely the AAA server, to perform authentication. Another method for authentication is called Transport Layer Security (TLS) and it relies on the use of public key cryptography and digital certificates. Relying on public key cryptography and digital certificates is cumbersome and inefficient. Another method has been proposed by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.1x and allows for only one relationship between a supplicant and an AS and such a method requires a Port Access Entity (PAE) for authentication. The method is lacking since it does not address issues associated with using a single ad hoc network to support access to independent systems or services. Accordingly, there exists a need to provide a supplicant to a requested service that addresses these shortcomings.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.